As special counsel Robert Mueller builds his case, relatives of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn are among those pressing the president to use his unique legal power and ‘put these defendants out of their misery.’

When it comes to her critics in the EU, however, there’s nothing that could win them over; not that the German chancellor was trying.

After Sunday’s serious setback in elections in Berlin — when Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) saw its support plummet while the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) made huge gains — the chancellor told reporters she would like to “turn back time by many, many years, so that [she] could better prepare [herself] and the whole government and all those in positions of responsibility for the situation that caught us unprepared in the late summer of 2015.”

Summer 2015 was when she opened Germany’s doors to thousands of migrants.

Merkel’s admission of misjudgments in dealing with the refugee crisis seemed to be what the CDU’s Bavarian sister party — one of her biggest critics — had been waiting for.

Merkel would rather go back in time to many years before summer 2015, way before Germany’s “rendezvous with globalization.”

“I see this as a highly respectable act,” German Agriculture Minister Christian Schmidt, deputy party chief of the Christian Social Union (CSU), told the DPA news agency. Bavarian Finance Minister Markus Söder acknowledged Merkel’s “change of course,” telling Die Welt that, “of course, now words must be matched with deeds.”

But Merkel’s statement on Monday was far from an admission of error. While she regretted not having the country sufficiently prepared for an influx of refugees, she stressed that thousands of asylum seekers flocking to Europe had been inevitable.

It was Merkel’s finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, who coined that term, elevating shortcomings in managing the refugee crisis by local and national authorities to a global level.

“The state of the EU in general and particularly the refugee crisis is not good at all,” Merkel said on Monday. “In Europe, we still don’t have a common understanding to acknowledge the flight of so many people for what it actually is, a global and moral challenge … It weighs on me, too, that we haven’t succeeded in that.”

She acknowledged that for many years, the EU’s Dublin regulation — under which refugees must register for asylum in the EU country through which they entered the bloc — placed the burden of migration on those countries with EU external borders, such as Greece and Italy; “keeping the problem at arm’s length” for Germany.

The main difference between Merkel and her most vocal critic among EU leaders, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, is that Merkel wants to change the Dublin system, sharing responsibility for refugees among countries. Orbán does not.

“We are not going to take responsibilities for the shortcomings of other countries,” Kovács said, referring to Greece’s problems securing its borders as well as to a German leader who “didn’t consult us” before opening the borders.

Nothing annoyed Merkel’s opponents (and some allies) more than her decision last August to temporarily open the border to refugees; shortly after, in September 2015, the CSU invited Orbán to a party conference, which was followed by a volley of CSU attacks directed at Merkel, with party chief Horst Seehofer describing her policy as a “rule of unlawfulness.”

Seehofer was in a friendlier mood after Merkel’s speech on Monday, saying “it’s high time that we find common ground to pass next year’s national elections.”

The conservatives will need to be singing from the same hymn sheet ahead of the vote, in the fall of 2017. Merkel is widely predicted to be running for chancellor again, although she hasn’t made that official, saying only that she will address the matter “in due time.”

If the AfD has its way, election debates will focus on refugees and the chancellor’s error in letting them in.

In December, her Christian Democrats hold an annual party summit — that’s when Merkel is likely to throw her hat into the ring.

It won’t be an easy contest for the CDU/CSU. The rise of the AfD has been meteoric. Founded just three years ago, the AfD now has seats in 10 of the 16 German state assemblies. It took over 14 percent of votes cast in the capital on Sunday and is on course to enter the Bundestag, or lower house of parliament, in next year’s election.

If the AfD has its way, election debates will focus on refugees and the chancellor’s error in letting them in.

It’s helped that Merkel has renounced her year-old mantra “We can do it” — her defiant response to those who doubted the country could cope with the influx of refugees.

“The sentence is part of my political work, it’s the expression of its stance and its aim,” Merkel said. “Much has been interpreted into this … sentence. So much that I hardly want to repeat it,” she said, adding that it had been widely misunderstood and turned into an “empty phrase.”

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Brian

Thanks for a great article. Enjoyed it very much. 🙂 But I hope Merkel sinks and fast. Shes deserves no less.

Posted on 9/20/16 | 9:07 PM CET

Maria Valentina Umer

I don´t think Chancellor Merkel has to apologise. She dealt humanitarily in the refugee crisis. Other world leaders should follow her example.

Posted on 9/20/16 | 9:42 PM CET

Cassy

@Maria Valentina Umer

She should concentrate on dealing ‘humanitarily’ with Germans. No thanks, I don’t want to be raped molested mugged or murdered and anything that increases the chances of that like taking in a million refugees is plain dumb.

Posted on 9/21/16 | 12:09 AM CET

Rodolfo

Why doesn’t the EU take away the VISA of all citizens from any country near Syria which refuses to take in refugees? Saudia Arabia?? Fellow muslims…where’s your comradeship?

Posted on 9/21/16 | 2:04 AM CET

Tom Cullem

Merkel opened the door to more than a millions not thousands of migrants, huge numbers of whom were poorly vetted, had no papers, and were economic migrants from places other than Syria. You could start by leaving the quiet propaganda at the door. 1.5 million by Germany’s own count. They plan to bring in 300,000 this year: that’s hundreds of thousands, not mere thousands.

This is why the public doesn’t trust the liberal press any longer.

Posted on 9/21/16 | 2:17 AM CET

Tom Cullem

@Maria – you don’t think she should apologise? No? Really? Why don’t you tell that to the thousand or so women assaulted in Cologne on New Year’s Eve by hordes of the men she let in?

Posted on 9/21/16 | 2:19 AM CET

Brian

@Maria Valentina Umer Maybe a hint is that no other world leader, not even Obama, has followed her lead. Even the Pope, who says we should all open up for more migrants, he took in one, screened family, into the Vatican. The hypocrisy from World leaders is obvious. Merkel wants others to join her migrant madness spree, but nobody will anymore. Sweden and Austria have bowed out too

Posted on 9/21/16 | 9:35 AM CET

jb

@Brian
Even Bavaria is fed up with this nonsense.
“Last week, the CSU released a paper, called “Germany Must Remain Germany,” outlining steps it would like to see taken, including the abolishment of dual citizenship and a preference for migrants from the “Christian-Western culture.” It is demands such as these that have led some to compare the CSU with the right-wing populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has gained significant amounts of support in recent months in Germany.”